André Vasquez, who was elected to Chicago’s City Council last year as a socialist, has voted in favor of the mayor’s budget. The Chicago DSA has censured him. This raises a big question: How can a socialist organization make its elected representatives accountable?
we repeatedly asked him if he supported socialism and he kept saying yes, the workers should control the means of production (a good sign)
then we went deeper into investigating his political beliefs - are cops bad? yes, he nodded - all of them are bastards.
what about violence, we asked, that’s bad, right? he didn’t get tripped up at all - he said it’s only sometimes bad, and never when the oppressed are acting against an oppressor.
at that point, we were feeling certain he was a Real Leftist and a Good Person, and had no inkling that we were in fact dealing with a shrewd political operator who would go rogue - in the future we will add more trick questions, and maybe make members do harder things, like graffiti and protests, or shake on a blood pact
oh so you mean once people grift us and acquire power, they’ll just pursue political self-interest or otherwise integrate into the electoral system? all of the purity testing is beyond pointless without real systems of accountability and control?
we repeatedly asked him if he supported socialism and he kept saying yes, the workers should control the means of production (a good sign)
then we went deeper into investigating his political beliefs - are cops bad? yes, he nodded - all of them are bastards.
what about violence, we asked, that’s bad, right? he didn’t get tripped up at all - he said it’s only sometimes bad, and never when the oppressed are acting against an oppressor.
at that point, we were feeling certain he was a Real Leftist and a Good Person, and had no inkling that we were in fact dealing with a shrewd political operator who would go rogue - in the future we will add more trick questions, and maybe make members do harder things, like graffiti and protests, or shake on a blood pact
oh so you mean once people grift us and acquire power, they’ll just pursue political self-interest or otherwise integrate into the electoral system? all of the purity testing is beyond pointless without real systems of accountability and control?
hmm, well, fuck